The past 12 months have seen some extraordinary deals done in both proptech sales and the level of investor spending.
So a proptech conference would not be complete without a chat with some of the country’s leading proptech founders about what that journey looks like.
Proptech Association Australia founder and president Kylie Davis led the discussion with Sarah Bell (Rita by AIRE, acquired by CoreLogic), Peter Matthews (Realtair, received $25 million investment funding from REA) and Chris Spanos (Insights Data Solutions, acquired by Domain for a $60 million cash payment with up to $99 million in additional contingent payments over five years).
Sarah Bell: “We were looking for investment to take Rita to the next level, as strategic investment in technology but also partnerships in data. It was a competitive round for us. We had lots of people interested and that’s a really good position to be in. CoreLogic looked at our five-year plan and they said how about we buy you now and you can sleep at night and here’s the keys to the property data universe and have fun. And we thought that sounded like an excellent idea.”
Peter Matthews: “Ours happened a little bit by accident. We approached REA about data, so that’s how that conversation began. Our initial investment with REA has been great because it’s provided us with a huge accessibility to a customer base that we might normally have not been able to get to. It’s got us there a lot quicker, but it all came about because it just started with a simple conversation.”
Chris Spanos: “We knew that because we’re a B2B company essentially, and especially supplying to government … and going after a secondary large state government, we needed to scale and we needed to scale fast. So we actually looked to do a large cap raise and that probably started at the beginning of 2021. Those conversations very quickly turned into ‘it actually makes more sense for us to acquire you’.”
Watch the full panel discussion at the Proptech Forum 2022 for more insights on how these proptechs sold their businesses or raised capital.
